A heliostat is a device that follows the sun and redirects its light to a location of your choice throughout the day.

What is The Sunflower Home Heliostat? The Sunflower Home Heliostat was designed with the goal of providing daylight to dark places, such as a North facing window — which never receives any direct sunlight. The original challenge that sparked the Sunflower’s development and creation was to create an affordable, easy to use, and solar powered heliostat. It is currently the only heliostat on the market that retails under $1,000 and sells for just $299.

But what is a heliostat? Typically, a heliostat contains a mirror, sun tracking mechanism, and some sort of motors or mechanical mechanisms to move the mirror. This device senses the sun, determines its location, while acknowledging your own location, and then triangulates all of that information and adjusts it as the sun moves across the sky. From this, a mirror can be constantly moved to maintain sunlight on one spot.